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The Importance of Marketing Analytics

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Analytics is one of those words: it gets used correctly for the most part, but often gets used as a catchall. As marketers, we understand the importance of having web analytics set up, of having an analyst on staff, and of constantly working with the data as a part of our daily practice. We spend a significant amount of time focused on site metrics and web analytics reports. We have a great sense of how our sites are performing technically, and how that backs out to money made.

But what if web analytics aren't enough?

Over the last few months, we’ve seen the rise of an equally important piece to the puzzle — marketing analytics — and I'd like to take some time and to explain what it is and how it can help all of us be more effective marketers.

So, what is Marketing Analytics?

Marketing analytics is the measurement and optimization of your marketing activities. Rather than focusing only on your site’s performance like you do with web analytics, you focus on how your marketing efforts are performing, and adjust them accordingly. Marketing analytics goes beyond on-site indicators and leans on other tools, offsite metrics, and even offline efforts. It takes a whole-picture approach to the measurement of your marketing.

The concept seems simple — and somewhat assumed — but many marketers spend hours in web analytics tools like Google Analytics and Omniture, looking at the outcome of their efforts as it relates to site performance, but don't go any further than that.

But what about analyzing the way you executed that campaign? What about the time of day you did things, or the vehicles you used? What about the conversations offsite, and the engagement in real life that resulted from those efforts? Marketing analytics is the act of looking past mere website results, and asking yourself, "How did that marketing campaign really go?"

Marketing analytics helps us see how everything plays off each other, and decide how we might want to invest moving forward. Re-prioritizing how you spend your time, how you build out your team, and the resources you invest in channels and efforts are critical steps to achieving marketing team success.

How do I get started with Marketing Analytics?

Like many new approaches to analytics, there is a learning curve. There will need to be some up-front explanation and defining. We wanted to break down the parts of marketing analytics and leave you with some kick-off questions to get started with.

1. How are your marketing activities performing?

This is the piece that most marketers have down pat. This is all about how are you performing right now. How are your current efforts paying off? If you focus solely on web analytics, you may find yourself focusing too narrowly on your site's results. With marketing analytics, you'll take a wide angle view.

Rather than simply reporting your visitor counts, time on site, and conversions, what about reporting more? What about the results that happened offsite? What about the less traditional KPI-driven results like conversations, comments, and shares? In addition to reporting more metrics, we should also be reporting them in a way that speaks to the entire team and the company at large. If you want to change how your company invests their marketing resources, you need to make a strong case for analyzing what is happening beyond your site, and to go beyond cookie cutter KPIs and report formats.

Here are a few examples of common web analytics performance KPIs (on the left) and then a contrasting list of marketing analytics KPIs (on the right). You can see how the list doesn't just grow in size, but requires us to use many tools, compile our own reports, and work to tell a story with the data.

Marketing analytics goes beyond traditional website KPIs. We find more of the metrics we care about tend to be people-centered: how are we doing our best job for both current visitors/customers and for future ones? How are our fans, friends, and followers engaging with us? Who's talking about our brand on other sites? We track metrics that help us use our time in the most valuable way possible, and we work to know exactly how our marketing activities are doing for us.

2. Where are your competitors investing time and resources?

Competitive analysis, you so funny. It's one of those things that all marketers know is important, but so many of us fail to carve out dedicated time for it. Marketing analytics assumes that competitive research is an ongoing, fluid effort. It shouldn't be something we do at the beginning of a project or when we take on a new client. It should be a constant metric we are aware of — and one we know as well as we do our own.

In addition to performance, we need to be aware of where they are putting their time. What are they testing? What are they investing in? This requires we jump out of our software and tools and become observers. Are they engaging more on certain networks? Are they pushing more money into content marketing? Are they investing heavily into channels that you may or may not be in?

This competitive layer adds color to your performance research. Now you know where you stand, where they stand, and you have a better sense of where things are going. This helps you invest in the right efforts, and possibly pull back from others.

3. How do your marketing activities perform in the long-term?

We understand the importance of knowing if we have improved week over week, and month over month, but too often we stop at that. There are so many other things to be watching closely when tracking success. How about the momentum of those gains and losses? What about the long-term quality of those gains and losses? How do those short-term wins turn into loyalty and ongoing engagement?Marketing analytics focuses more on the overall performance of our efforts, and the many ways we can single them out to improve them.

Imagine planning your marketing roadmap around yesterday's results only, or your site's performance only. Scary, huh? We agree. Now imagine planning a marketing roadmap around how each channel has done over time, and how your specific efforts returned across all the objectives you care about (money, engagement, loyalty, etc.) — that sounds way better. If you take the time up front to map that movement out, you will make more holistic decisions about where to invest your energy.

Here are some great additional questions to ask when working to understand how your activities are returning:

4. How does your marketing analytics data inform your next decision?

We all understand the premise that we need to invest where things are returning well. This is most commonly applied in performance marketing, but all of our marketing efforts demand the same closing of the loop. Marketing analytics can help us close the loop as it relates to our marketing efforts and investments. Instead of assuming some channels always work — or that some channels are never going to work — you should be testing where and how you spend your time, and prioritizing next quarter’s investments accordingly.

This is most easily applied when it comes to staffing and budget spend, but what about time spent on researching new tools, new processes, creating new tests, and designs? Are you giving your time to the right channels? Marketing analytics helps us get to the bottom of that, and because of it you can make your next move a fully informed one.

Common mistakes with Marketing Analytics

There are quite a few common challenges people face when trying to invest in marketing analytics. Here are a few we've found, and tips on how to avoid them.

Set it and forget it dilemma: We've all done it. You hear about this new cool analytics tool. You set it up and start collecting data, but you never quite circle back to see how things are going and what it's telling you. Or, worse yet, we receive weekly reports sent to us but we fail to interpret the data for valuable insights. It's the "set it and forget it" dilemma. Marketing analytics expects more. To do it well, you need to be testing both new channels and new tools to track their success — then set aside time to dive into the data. A key piece to successful marketing analytics is to be proactive and constantly pushing the limits on the process behind your decisions. It takes time. Marketers are strapped for time, but this is time well spent.

Thinking it’s a CMO's job: A common misconception around deciding how to grow a marketing program is to think it's solely the CMO's job to do so. Instead, we should look at it as every marketer's responsibility to know how their efforts are returning and what to do next. This should back out to a roadmap for your channel or job responsibilities. If you leave it to the top of the organization, you often get a very disconnected roadmap. It should be a joint conversation.

Failing to evangelize the wins and losses: One of the most common mistakes we fast-moving, highly caffeinated marketers make is failing to evangelize the results of our efforts. To make marketing analytics part of your team's culture and place it in the forefront of your company's mind, you need to be sharing how things are going on a regular basis. Rather than tell them you "use inbound marketing to attract community members," you can talk about the specific campaigns, content pieces, and efforts. Show them which ones are working, and which ones need work. Ask for ideas and feedback. By getting them involved, they will be more invested in seeing it succeed.

In conclusion: you need both

While we think marketing analytics is critical for a successful marketing program, we aren’t saying it should replace your web analytics. Quite the opposite, actually. We think it’s the combination of the two that set a team up to succeed. If you spend time analyzing both your site’s performance and your efforts' performance you will have the full picture: What is working? What needs help? What demands a pivot?

We’ve already seen more tools and resources pop up to help marketers really understand how their efforts are affecting the full picture. I think the next year will bring even more into the space. Many marketers are already looking at the big view marketing analytics provides today, albeit without dedicated tools that provide all of this functionality. For most marketers, the task is a manual one that requires multiple tools to get the full view — but it's worth it. As marketing teams continue to grow in size, and marketers wear more and more hats, we think more people will demand mature tools that make it easy to document a game plan. Rather that navigate that landscape based solely on conversions or other secondary metrics, there will be a demand for a more holistic approach to help us understand how we are doing, and where we should be doing more.

I’m excited to see marketing analytics continue to evolve, and to see how tools develop to make it a smoother, more repeatable process — and I'm super excited to see how that can help us all be more efficient, successful marketers. I’d love to hear how you are applying this form of analysis, and what tools you use to help dictate where to invest your time and resources. Please leave comments and thoughts below!

About JoannaLord —
Joanna is the VP of Growth Marketing at SEOmoz. She loves startups, coffee & hugs. That about sums her up.

43 Comments

Cross-channel marketing analytics is very very sorely underserved (still), mostly because it's really f'n tough.The people involved in the entire marketing process from end to end are typically different types of marketers with their own types of analytics. For example a campaign might have someone managing an advertising team doing TV, outdoor and print, display marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, a social media team, a search team, etc. The way we measure each of those channels is still very separate. Traditional media is measured one way, PPC another, SO another, social media 17000 other ways.The process itself is hardly done well, even inside of large organizations. Ideally it's something like this:

Define your audiences (and/or personas). Who are they, what do they need, what do they like/dislike about what's already out there, what do they want more/less of from you, from your competitors, from your industry, etc? Also prioritize them for later.

Analyze your competitive landscape. What are you up against and how can you serve those audiences better, more innovate, more emotionally and personally rewarding ____.

Where are your audiences? Not just online. Where are they *anywhere*. Are they at night clubs, on commuter trains, in airports, on Mashable, in hardware stores, shopping online and offline, hanging out in forums, etc. This helps determine what channels to go after in your marketing. There are lots and lots of businesses who still have far more marketing opportunity offline than online, or have limited opportunity in search but far more in other channels like outdoor advertising for example.

What are your goals? What do you want to achieve with this campaign? Set goals that are *measurable* and within a certain time period. This will drive what you measure.

Strategy: How will you meet and exceed the needs of those target audiences, outdoing whatever the competition is doing, connecting with them emotionally (ideally) while serving their needs?

Execute. You know who you're targeting, where they are, what goals you want to measure, timeframe for getting to those goals, strategy for getting to those goals, and you've got the marketing team up and running and ready to go.

Measure: Herein lies the problem. Cross-channel marketing is still tough to measure. Not impossible by any means, and lots of companies are doing it*, you just need a really. really. really. big budget to even be able to see what's behind the curtain at those copanies.

Listen, learn, evolve: You know the drill here.

For a mid-sized business and even many large businesses, cross-channel analytics is not affordable, and the teams and tools remain largely disparate.

*Forrester puts out some great reports on cross-channel analytics platforms:

http://www.sas.com/news/analysts/104330_0112.pdf

(and web analytics platforms: http://webtrends.com/shared/whitepaper/Whitepaper-ForresterWEbAnalyticsReport-Webtrends.pdf) but again, that stuff is usually enterprise-focused.

Though truthfully, if you're doing traditional outdoor/TV/print marketing + online you may have the budget for that stuff anyway.

We've often talked in the SEO field about how your marketing is bigger than your website (and your community is bigger than just what happens on your domain). I think this is an excellent, logical extension of that principle. We have to measure outside our sites to see what's happening in the search rankings, in the social media world, in the blogosphere, on sites sending referring traffic, and with our competitors or else we can't build a complete picture.Remarkable post and great concept Joanna - thank you!

For too long I've only concentrated on website analytics. This article is a great reminder to look at the big picture and measure your ROI for marketing efforts in conjunction with website analytics. Great post Joanna!

Thanks Brad! I don't think you are alone on that :) I know I've been over focused in the past on web analytics, I think its partly because there has been less tools available to help us understand it, but also because fewer people felt empowered to make decisions around marketing resources in a company. Definitely seeing that change now. Good luck to you!

This is an awesome post and is definitely the natural evolution for what's been going on in our industry. In other words, we're already working on taking SEO to RCS with building strong community and remarkable content using targeted strategy, but the measurement and analysis portion of the equation hasn't really been directly addressed. This is a great way to help the community think about meaningful data and move toward a more effective way of showing our clients what all of this hard work is actually doing for them.

Whats about the 1st pic (covering Web Analytics and "website's performance") it should include more wide definition like Technical Analysis or something like that because website's performance definitely the main filed of server works and its a pretty wide. IMHO.

I would love a good practical guide to marketing analytics. So far, for me, it comes down to asking the right relevant questions for a particular business, but it would be great to have a common list of relevant questions and reports/procedures to get the answers.

May I confess that I was literally dancing on my chair while reading this post, Joanna? You nailed it, and somehow concretize in written words something I was feeling as the correct way to really measure things.If we are all repeating every day the mantra that SEO is not anymore just a question of Title tags, that link building is something strictly synergically connected with Social and Content Marketing, and that online and offline cannot be considered two worlds apart, then just thinking in web analytics and on site analytics is not enough anymore to understand the real value of the strategy we have developed and the tactics we have planned to use to make that strategy working.An huge benefit of marketing analytics, then, is also "internal", as it is also what answers to most common "board" questions, and those are the data, which can offer you a better budget or give you more time from the board of directors: imagine what a convincing "weapon" marketing analytics can for the so-many-times-neglected-by-the-bosses-in-house SEOs.Thanks Joanna for this so clear post :)

It’s an incredible post. Web Analytics
and Marketing Analytics are both segments important to measure current level of
improvement and future improvements in term of campaigns, and ROI. A Post is
just peace of all the key points which all website owners or web masters needs
to care about their marketing campaigns and online investments.

Thanks Joanna for sharing with US
in-depth analysis of Web and Marketing Analytics Aspects!

I believe that another term for this would be "business intelligence." It is all about using web analytics and the KPI's that are collected from offline marketing to discover how particular campaigns are actually affecting the business. Conversions are one thing, but more importantly, what caused the conversions (both online and off) so that it can be repeated.

With 2013 being the year of content marketing, web analytics are more important than ever. The pressure marketing managers face to prove ROI on online marketing is already intense, and proving the worth of content to the powers that be is a stretch for many of these managers. Setting goals, moving content fast, and monitoring content campaign performance in order to adjust the strategy and capitalize on opportunities is crucial to improving ROI month-over-month.Without analytics, I can't imagine any marketer feels any real sense of understanding and control. Here's a bit more on analytics: The Emotion Behind Web Analytics http://www.allwebcafe.com/right-now/analytics.php

I've been struggling with exactly this recently as I focus my time more on Distilled's growth. It's really freaking hard to attribute success to individual activities.I have been making do with proxy metrics that rely on assumptions ("growing our email list" as a proxy for "extending our community" - that kind of thing).I love the "marketing analytics" term and I'd love to see some more tools to help me do this properly.

Thank you JoannaLord, for your excellent post. It is fact;
most of us ignore Marketing Analytic.
We think about the importance but never done the necessary. Your post will
encourage many to take a initiative. I know how important these marketing
analytic is for making marketing decisions or future approach. If we can
analyze KPI of marketing analytic we
can visualize the exact outcome we are getting from our marketing effort.Google web analytic can
only give us a quantity measure but we know quality of traffic is playing the
role here. To measure the quality and effectiveness of marking effort
we must look for Marketing Analytic. Yet no single tool invented for full
proved marketing analytic, even though we collect data from different sources
and merge them to build a picture. I also appreciate google approach
towards Marketing Analytic in Google Analytic. And at last i also
want some detail about Marketing Analytic KPI and how we could collect those
data for a effective analytic. I think you will publish these in next
post.

from very long time i have focused on web analytics and Joanna your article is really awesome and provides very good picture of web analytics and how to measure your ROI for doing marketing efforts with website analytics.

I love this post as it addresses some challenges I face in communicating web vs. marketing analytics. One question I want to pose is I'm having difficulty showing growth in web site traffic as it compares to competitors and other companies. My organization is heavy into benchmarking and wanted to know/ask how others do it?

You mentioned several "tools" to aid with marketing analytics instead of just web analytics. Joanna, what are some of your favorite tools or tips or processes for doing marketing analytics with a more holistic view?

Well, this is my first time here and honestly I'm amazed by how you handle situations. Marketing is indeed a big part of every business but of course it is divided in so many areas and unfortunately there are instances that we focus on one thing and forget about the other. I really like this post because it opens up our mind that in order to really test out possibilities we need to focus on two things. A lot are focus on web analytics without realizing that Marketing Analytics is also there and need some freshen up. Thanks!

A refreshing article. It's really easy to get lost in analytics. Loved this line:

"What about the less traditional KPI-driven results like conversations, comments, and shares"

These things should definitely be added to your value add on top of traditional reporting metrics.

And if you don't have the budget to do too much marketing outside of your website it's important to remember local. Cost will be less, but maybe 2x as effective. There's just something about local that makes people feel warm and safe. You can be on vacation in another state/country and meet someone who's from the same state/city as you and you'll instantly feel more connected to that person even though they're a complete stranger. I know I do. Using that in your marketing initiatives can definitely be beneficial.

I mean how my website is performing sounds like a legit
question to me but what i can optimize my marketing activities that positively
impact the website is something one should consider 1st! Answers of this
question might give you the idea of where to invest your marketing budget to
get most out of it...

How your website is performing is very much depends upon how
good you are with your marketing tactics, if you are good and optimized enough
then you should invest more on product or may be affiliations or more but if
your marketing tactics are not killer enough then I guess it gives you clear
hint of where to invest!

Web Analytics is a part of marketing analytics, Marketing is a broad word that will directly effect on your business ROI, and the main reason people have misconception about SEO's that they always need rank from them rather than ask to give them a business and focusing on ROI for this you have to analyze market not only the web or keywords.Nice Post lady :)

I was always been told by my marketing officer that SEO is now not technique to do with On page and Off page things .... the main part in SEO comes when we analyze the data and the traffic on the daily basis and prioritize that what and when to push the particular segment. Being working in Largest E commerce we always takes approx two hours to analyze the market data and to analyze the traffic reports from omniture and database reports ....

Web analytics and metrics can tell us who, what, where, and when; and what we need to know is why, and how. Knowing traffic increased on Friday, November 23rd doesn't provide the right insight if it isn't tied to the other pieces (e.g. social shares went through the roof that same day, the shares were the result of a successful email campaign targeting the right influencers, and so on...).

Honestly, I think we hear too often how correlation does not equal causation. At some point, you should be able to run with the strong-enough correlations to augment your marketing strategies.

If a social media burst improves traffic and subscriptions, great! Why not add social sharing to email newsletters? The content is already going to be produced; why not re-purpose and allow newsletter subscribers to share?

A tool that could track the full length of a marketing path would be awesome... From the email campaign, to the influencer, to the social shares, to the influenced, to their social shares, to the traffic, and so on and so forth. Is there something like this already?

Anyways, great food for thought! You certainly made me think more about how the pieces fit together to beat the zero-sum game.

Great post Joanna. One of the things i picked up is the first image. It gives the impression that web analytics and marketing analytics meet at a certain point and there is a sweat spot when they intersect somehow. I would argue that web analytics is one of the different measurement we need to be doing as part of our overall marketing review. I see web analtyics as a subsect. Depending on your business, your overall marketing activities will lead to both online and offline activities.

The review of your activities also needs to take into consideration emerging marketing channels and how they fit in your overall marketing objectives.

Great post on analytics. I see a lot of companies using analytics but once they have that data they do not really do anything with. For example if you see you a high bounce rate on a page or alot of traffic and no conversions, then why. Is it a web page problem, broken link, spelling mistake or just bad copy. You not only need to analyse the data but then figure out what to do with the data.

Welp, i have a new thing to print out and put on my "think wall" at home: http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/questions%202.png

You mention a lot of data inputs including competitive intel. Can you speak to some of the data collection, aggregation, storage methods you guys use? A data "clearing house" can become a dire need pretty quickly when the inputs are many.

I also think it's worth mentioning that drawing conclusions aren't necessarily cut and dry, especially when you don't control all the variables (stupid search engines...) so getting comfy with data science (particularly if you have lots of data) might be essential in answering questions like "how well does X activity correlate to high LTV?" I'm definitely not the guy that answers those questions, but working with a few folks that can has been a MASSIVELY helpful experience. Having those answers directly impact quarterly planning and product iteration.

Thanks! Post Analytics has been around a little while now, but it's pretty hidden. Casey Henry on our team came up with that idea, it feeds right into our transparency value and its just fun to check out. Glad you like it!

Google Analytics is getting better at capturing a few of the Marketing Analytics mentioned in the article. As far as Twitter is concerned I am checking out Followerwonk, Hashtracking, and Commun.it. I use Google Alerts and a few other tools for general brand monitoring. And I'm using Excel to keep track of many of the other stats.

Looking for more of an all-in-one or most-in-one solution with minimal cost if anyone has any suggestions. I've been bouncing between too many tools to get the information I need. Out of interest, I would also like to know about a few of the costly tools too if you use and like them.

You make a great point. We see GA investing in some of this (multi-touch attribution is a great example), it will be interesting to see how far they take it.

Finding an all-in-one solution right now is really hard, we still find ourselves jumping into a bunch of tools and hacking things together, but I think we will see this change in the upcoming year or so.

Not sure exactly what your looking for but the big expensive ones are names like Crimson Hexagon and Radian 6. I also saw one yesterday called Trackur that looks pretty good. Filelytics is a solution that we built for social monitoring as well as CRM, email, and text monitoring.

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